


All This And Heaven Too

by tricksterity



Series: Ceremonials [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Established Relationship, Good Draco Malfoy, HP: EWE, M/M, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 09:32:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5243321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricksterity/pseuds/tricksterity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Harry opened his mouth to ask what was going on when the noise level in the Great Hall shot up so much that he nearly had to cover his ears. McGonagall turned to look at the entranceway and grinned, eyes lighting up, and Harry turned around to see what everyone was looking at.</i>
</p><p>  <i>His heart stopped for a beat.</i></p><p>  <i>What took Harry’s breath away, what made McGonagall smile at the boy who tried to kill Dumbledore, what made the entire school whisper when Harry passed, wasn’t just the Dark Mark that stood out inky and pitch-black against his skin, but the other mark that now stained his skin.</i></p><p> </p><p>Otherwise known as: that time Draco Malfoy gets a tattoo to represent his journey and his changing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All This And Heaven Too

* * *

 

 

Harry walked out of his last exam in a state of disbelief. He was tempted to call the past year just as (if not _more)_ stressful than the year they’d took off to hunt for horcruxes while running for their lives, because at least then they were able to sleep. Harry felt like he hadn’t slept in months, not properly, not since at the very least since Easter break when he’d gone home to Grimmauld Place with Andromeda and Teddy and passed out for a solid fifteen hours. For the last few months it seemed like he and everyone else had spent every waking moment studying for their NEWTs and writing practice assignments, taking what small chances they had every now and then to sleep or simply relax.

 

And now it was over.

 

He felt confident enough in his grades and felt that he’d done well, both in the theoretical exams and the practical. He’d spoken to McGonagall and Merrythought a few months ago on what he had to do to qualify for the DADA internship, and he thought that McGonagall would burst with how happy she’d looked. She’d explained that ever since the job had been jinxed by Voldemort, they’d never had the chance for a proper DADA professor, so they’d only taken on interim professors like Merrythought. He’d have to get an O in Defence Against the Dark Arts (which was a given), Charms and Care of Magical Creatures in order to meet the bare-bones qualifications of the internship. He needed a high grade in History of Magic in order to give examples in class (though McGonagall had admitted that his own life was probably filled with enough examples to last twenty years) and he needed to pass Transfiguration and Potions.

 

Harry for the first time in his life had actually buckled down and did some study, and it helped that his boyfriend and one of his best friends were the two top students in the year. Hermione had her colour-coded planners, flashcards and determination, but Draco had… much more interesting ways of studying.

 

Draco had taken his last exam the day before, Arithmancy with Hermione. He needed at least six O level NEWTs in order to become a curse breaker, and Hermione had been studying under Professor McGonagall, who had informed her that she had been in Magical Law Enforcement before she retired to teach at Hogwarts. Hermione had been thrilled with that, and hadn’t been able to stop talking about all of the stories that McGonagall told her about her days back at the Ministry.

 

Luna was the only other person who was taking NEWT level Care of Magical Creatures with Harry, and she hugged him goodbye before she headed off to wait for Neville who was due to finish his Herbology exam within the hour. Ginny, who had already been offered a place as reserve on the Holyhead Harpies technically didn’t need any NEWT levels, but she’d told Harry that she’d already worked so hard during the year and that she might end up hating playing professional Quidditch. Having NEWTs would help her to get into whatever career she wanted if that were the case, so she’d taken a broad range of subjects.

 

Harry looked down at his watch and noted that it was quarter past one, and their group had all decided to meet up outside by the Black Lake at two-thirty and enjoy the freedom, breathe in the fresh air and know that they didn’t have to do any more study like that for the rest of their lives.

 

Due to the exam schedule messing up everyone’s timetables, the Great Hall was currently a sort of all-you-can-eat buffet so everyone could eat after their exams, and Harry’s stomach rumbled at the thought. He hitched his bag up higher and headed towards the stairs, passing younger students who were either frantically studying in the alcoves near their exam rooms or relaxing and enjoying the sun that shone warm and bright through the windows.

 

Now, Harry knew from all the times that his friends had told him that most of the time he was rather… unobservant. And he wasn’t going to lie, a lot of the time noticing small details wasn’t really something he did, but even he noticed when every student on his way to the Great Hall peered over at him, widened their eyes and then began fervently whispering to whoever they were with. He resisted the urge to duck into the bathroom and make sure that there wasn’t anything on his face, because this was more than the usual level of staring he got just for being the Chosen One.

 

He was wary by the time he reached the Great Hall and the whispers only seemed to increase, and he was more than suspicious when he sat down at the Gryffindor table to eat and saw even the professors whispering among themselves. Sure that one of his friends would eventually track him down and explain what was going on, he picked up a warm roll and sliced it down the middle, packing it with enough butter to make Hermione cringe. He poured himself a cool glass of lemonade, not really feeling like pumpkin juice, and ignored the stares like he always did.

 

Maybe Rita Skeeter had put out an interesting article about him again, those were always entertaining. She’d only stopped for a while after Hermione had threatened to out her as an illegal animagus, but since Dumbledore had died she’d really started to get worked up again.

 

Harry finished his first roll and had just started on his second when he looked up and saw McGonagall getting up from the teacher’s table to approach him. It must be something pretty serious if she was coming to talk to him. Dread filled him as ice shivered down his spine, thinking that someone must’ve been hurt, it was like Hermione’s petrification all over again.

 

It wasn’t until McGonagall got closer and Harry saw her expression that he breathed a sigh of relief – she didn’t look concerned or regretful, she didn’t have a pinched brow or thin lips like she usually had. In fact it rather looked like she was trying very hard to hold back an uncharacteristic smile.

 

“Mr Potter,” she greeted, and Harry swallowed down his mouthful of buttery bread.

 

“Headmistress,” he greeted. “I get the feeling something’s going on?”

 

“Something indeed,” she replied, and this time she couldn’t quite hide the smile that overtook her face. What she said next really threw Harry for a loop, “Mr Malfoy was looking for you.”

 

“Uh… okay?” he replied, confused. He hadn’t seen Draco that morning, but that wasn’t unprecedented considering that they’d all had some pretty messed up schedules for the past week due to exams. “Is he… okay?”

 

“He’s quite alright,” McGonagall smiled. Now Harry was suspicious again.

 

“Has he done something?” he asked, thinking back on the past few weeks. Now that he thought about it, there had been a few hours every now and then when Draco had seemingly disappeared, and when Harry had checked the Map he hadn’t seen Draco on it and had just assumed he’d gone off to the Room of Requirement for some alone time. But…

 

_“The Room of Requirement is still burning,” Hermione said. “I don’t know if it’ll ever go out, but the Fiendfyre’s been burning for so long I don’t think anyone even has the ability to put it out.”_

 

Damn, how had he forgotten that she’d said that? She’d also said that Harry was probably the only one with enough magical ability to put it out since McGonagall and Flitwick had tried and failed, but Harry highly doubted that he’d be able to do something that the professors couldn’t. If Draco hadn’t been disappearing off to the Room of Requirement, that meant that he was leaving the premises, either to Hogsmeade or elsewhere. Was he planning something?

 

“Oh Merlin, he’s not going to _propose_ is he?” Harry blurted, and Professor McGonagall laughed.

 

“No, nothing of the sort, Mr Potter,” she said, eyes twinkling much in the way that Dumbledore used to when he was particularly amused. Or knew something that Harry didn’t. Harry opened his mouth to ask what was going on when the noise level in the Great Hall shot up so much that he nearly had to cover his ears. McGonagall turned to look at the entranceway and grinned, eyes lighting up, and Harry turned around to see what everyone was looking at.

 

His heart stopped for a beat.

 

Draco was standing in the entranceway to the Great Hall wearing nothing but jeans and a tank top, which was unusual in of itself, as he would usually be caught dead in Muggle clothes, let alone anything as casual as jeans, although he’d been experimenting a little. More unusual was the fact that he was wearing a tank top, as he tended to avoid short sleeves so his Dark Mark and the surrounding scars were hidden from the public although Harry had been trying to get him to be more comfortable with showing it after their night in the common room.

 

What took Harry’s breath away though, what made McGonagall smile at the boy who tried to kill Dumbledore, what made the entire school whisper when Harry passed, wasn’t just the Dark Mark that stood out inky and pitch-black against his skin, but the other mark that now stained his skin.

 

Stretching across Draco’s collarbone in bright hues of vermillion, amber and gold was a phoenix, it’s wings outstretched to nearly Draco’s shoulders, tail feathers slipping down his arm and ending just an inch or two above his stagnant Dark Mark. Harry moved closer without even realising it, like a dream, and noticed that the tattoo pointedly did not move in the way that all wizarding tattoos did… Draco had got this etched into his skin the Muggle way. The phoenix that overtook his skin overshadowed the Dark Mark by far, a beacon of hope and change scored into his flesh just as permanently as the sign of Voldemort.

 

Harry stopped not even a foot away from Draco, eyes glued to his collarbones, taking in the sweeping lines of the phoenix. From closer up it looked more like a watercolour painting than anything else, no harsh black lines, just feathers and fire and so much detail it must’ve taken weeks to be completed, not to mention how painful it would be with the needle going over such thin skin and bone…

 

“Sickle for your thoughts?” Draco asked, and Harry finally tore his eyes away from the tattoo to look up at Draco, seeing his slightly nervous expression.

 

“I… you…” Harry stuttered, unable to articulate the whirlwind of emotions inside him. “It’s beautiful,” he finally breathed.

 

“I thought that I needed something just as permanent as the Mark, something that would outweigh it,” Draco murmured quietly as he stepped closer, into Harry’s space. “Something that when people saw it, they’d know that this was the same as removing the Mark – _more_. And it shows me that I’ve overcome who I was and have… been reborn, for the lack of a better word.”

 

“You just wanted to make a lame joke about your tattoo,” Harry replied breathlessly.

 

“Not denying that,” Draco replied, twisting his hands so his palms faced Harry. Harry laced their fingers together and broke away from Draco’s grey eyes to look back down at the tattoo, seeing the inflamed redness around the edges that stood out on such pale skin, the way that some of the darker areas were scabbing up slightly already. It must’ve only just been finished within the last few hours, just in time for Draco to show Harry as he left his final exam.

 

It was hard to wrap his head around the fact that this phoenix, this representation of everything that Harry and the rest of them had stood for, had _died_ for, was now permanently etched into Draco’s skin for everyone to see for the rest of time.

 

Draco Malfoy, the Slytherin prince and ex-Death Eater had gone into a Muggle tattoo parlour and had a phoenix, the representation of Dumbledore and all that was Light, tattooed onto him for eternity. Anyone that saw the Dark Mark on his arm would look up and see the phoenix and know exactly what kind of person Draco Malfoy was now.

 

“I love you,” Harry breathed for the first time. He didn’t even get to look at the expression on Draco’s face before the fingers in his tightened and dragged him forward so Draco could capture his mouth in a hungry kiss. Harry let go of Draco’s left hand and trailed it up his arm, over the Mark and gently over the new raised skin of the tattoo, along his collarbone and up his neck to he could cup his jaw. Draco’s free hand dug itself into Harry’s hip, and he caught Harry’s lower lip between his teeth as he pulled away.

 

“I love you too,” Draco replied, resting his forehead on Harry’s with a stupid, sappy, silly grin.

 

“When that has healed I am running my tongue along all of it,” Harry shot back, and Draco’s fingers tightened on Harry’s hip.

 

“Sounds like a plan.”

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> In case you'd like to know what sort of style Draco's tattoo is in, it's heavily inspired by the works of tattoo artist Sasha Unisex, found here: https://www.instagram.com/sashaunisex/
> 
> This may or may not be the last installment in this series.
> 
> **If you liked my writing and you're interested in me writing something for you, click[HERE](http://tricksterity.tumblr.com/post/140544637431) for more information! **


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